A game that starts off nice and easy. Survive the D-day landings on Omaha beach!
        This game is a lot of fun, especially the sniper sections. You can zoom the sniper scope by pressing the D-pad. I've not found the bazooka and Panzerschreck much use against tanks –great for anti-personnel and to take out MG nest. If you have to take out a tank, look for a MG42. In this game a MG will chew up a tank.

Like too many games, there are no save points within a level, so if you are killed you have to refight all your battles, and some of these levels are quite long.

Blade is a third person game, just for a bit of variety. Most of the movement is achieved with just the left thumbstick, and this works very well. The right thumbstick chooses which direction that he fights.

Sections when he uses his sword are very good, some nice moves. Often you get cinematic “finishing moves” in these sections, although the game does occasionally stutter. The finishing scenes are not so welcome if you have the machine pistol in hand since this wastes ammo that you will probably need.

This game could do with another (lower) difficulty level. Odds are stacked heavily against you in places, with missions such as killing every vampire in the disco. Your control of the firearms could be better when you come up against gun armed foes.

So far I've only come up against one block. You are supposed to shoot out the four crystals on a computer. Did this but waves of vampires came on indefinitely with no way to leave the room. Solution seems to have been more firepower. As well as shooting out the crystals pour more rounds into the core of the computer until it explodes. (In fact I've now realised that there are four more crystals higher up. You have to use the machine pistol, not the shotgun to get these, and your best chance is to back up to the edge of the chamber.)

Main flaw with Blade 2 is the usual –not enough save points. I'm in the chapter where you have to dodge between tube trains. Every time I die I have to go back and spend at least five minutes killing every vampire and helper in the station. (Trick with the trains is to take it an alcove at a time.)

On later levels odds get even steeper, and you have to contend with poison gas too. The last two “boss-fights” are with the sword only -would have been nice to have had the option of the firearms.

Escort missions vary. Dr.Grant backs away from trouble so you can deal with it. Whistler just limps into masses of vamps and zombies and appears to carry his shotgun just for show.

I decided that my growing collection of games needed a “Beat-em Up”. Dead or Alive 3 seemed to be the most popular, although Mortal Kombat was about to come out and looked very promising. What swung it was that Mortal Kombat was not out yet and would come out at full price, while DOA3 was in the shops and in the discount racks.

DOA3 is a fun game. A very nice feature is that you have a lot of freedom in how you can customize the buttons of a controller.

Minor disappointment was that the options included a “story mode”, which I expected to be a long interactive movie or campaign similar to Halo or Blood wake. In fact this is just a couple of fights you have to win to unlock a minute or so of cutscene.

Several of the arenas are on multiple levels. You can kick a foe through a window, watch them fall through a neon sign then jump down to the street and continue to beat them. Graphics level is very high. Team Ninja's rendering of their female characters has become so noted they've released a spin-off with the girls playing beach volleyball! I'm holding out for “DOA - Baby-Oil Wresting”.

Deathrow is my only team sport game (unless you count certain parts of Unreal Championship). Game is a sort of basketball with an electrified Frisbee and lots of physical contact.

To be honest I only played with it a little when I first got it. It appears to be a good game, although at the time I'd mainly been playing Halo and Splinter Cell so the different controls seemed a bit odd. I expect playing it now will be easier now that I've used a greater variety of games, although the controls do seem a little involved.

Saw this for only £14.99 when the game had just been released. It's a nice game with some good features, but could be better.

Driving the tanks and jeeps is pretty good. I'd like to see the idea of linking the jeep's weapons to the camera used in the next version of Halo.

Many of the human missions are escort missions. The penultimate one is a little unfair. Your jeep has to protect the tank from air attack but is also expected to do most of the fighting against the ground targets. Why did we bring the tank?

Another mission has you driving around a dockyard collecting eggs in a buggy. You are given 90secs to do this, which is not even time to find your way past the obstacles, so this level is essentially unplayable.

I've only played a couple of the dragon levels. The dragon flies well, although it can be easy to get disorientated with the direction you want to fly sometimes, and hitting targets, particularly flying ones takes practice. However, one can't discount the therapeutic value of burning down a castle after a hard day at work.

Main flaw of this game is that there are so few levels to play.

Metal Dungeon is not a Doom-type game, as I'd partially hoped when I brought it. Reminds me more of Dungeons and Dragons in the days when you needed a stack of dice and had a rule book an inch thick. This is more of a campaign game, the challenge being how you use your points and wealth to build up your characters' profiles.

The combat sections of the game are basically automated cutscenes. If you are quick you can change a character from “Attack” to “Guard” so they take less damage. Theoretically you can also make them use spells or items in the fight, but in practice this usually of little benefit. You have little control of which monster the characters attack, so often you see one wasting a high damage attack on a minor threat rather than finishing off a more deadly foe. Each character only has one animation for his attack, and shots or blows pass over the heads of the shorter monsters and underneath the bats. Basically a bit sloppy and boring after a while.

As I've said already, I'm no great fan of race games. The only reason I have this is that it came with the X-box, on the same disc as Jet Set Radio Future. I'd never even started the game until I decided to write this article.

Since this is a freebee and on the same disc as another game I don't know if this is the full version of the game. This version only has four main tracks. It does, however, have lots of cars you can work up to with any prize money you win. You can drive your cars by third person or first person views, select between manual and automatic transmissions etc, so plenty of options. There are even races where you can drive “vintage” cars –but this means 1970s, not 1900s.

This is very much a real drivers game. To get anywhere you have to understand how devices such as racing rev counters work. These are a mystery to me so my car seldom got out of third gear!

Graphic quality is very good, but on the example I have sound is rather poor. Lots of static.

This came on the same disc as Sega GT 2002. Idea is that you are a graffiti artist on roller skates who is guided by a pirate radio station. In real life most taggers are self-indulgent wannabes desperately trying to find self value, and pirate stations are generally unoriginal ego trips that stamp on the station you actually wanted to listen to...but, for this game you suspend disbelief and graffiti is going to fight tyranny and make the world a better place.

It's a third person game and the graphics are simple, but not crude. Think Anime.

The third person view really lets you admire all the tricks and jumps your character can make. There are various tasks to perform, and the makers have struck the right level of challenging without straying into near impossible (certain other companies take note).

I've played this alot, and it is a lot of fun, particularly the grinding down railings and scattering pedestrians (while making the world better for them). Don't let the simplistic graphics or the fact that this is a freebee blind you to the fact that this really is an excellent game in its own right.

If I don't like race games, why did I buy Quantum Redshift? I don't know, but I'm rather glad I did.

This game is set in the racing world of the 22^nd Century. You drive what is essentially a racing landspeeder that is supposably capable of 900 mph. These vehicles can travel at high speed over land or water and make great leaps through the air. If that wasn't enough, they are also armed, so if can't out speed a competitor you can at least slow them down!

Graphics on this game are very nice. Apparently the refresh rate is more than 60 frames per second. That of a movie is only 24 fps. There are plenty of courses and they are nice and varied. A clever option is that you can race around them in the opposite direction, which on some courses can make a lot of difference.

Adding to the fun is that you can watch your race as a spectator in replay mode. Sega GT 2002 also had this feature, but the Quantum Redshift version is far more watchable and exciting.

Quantum Redshift is a lot of fun. It is not as well known as other race games, but I'm told that it has combined all of the good features of other games into one. If you want a race game it is well worth trying out.

Nothing begins with the letter C in the world of Mortal Kombat, which is an excuse for any reviewer to be very silly...

Since the other beat-em up I have is Dead or Alive 3, it is natural that I'm going to kompare the two. I'd say that DOA definitely has the edge on graphics- better rendering, closer camera views, and the replay mode of the last seconds of each fight. Also, you can range all over the arena, jumping down levels etc while on MK you are kontained by a force field.

On the other hand, the controls of MK are simpler. The four main buttons each launch an attack, the black button a special move, the left trigger khanges style and the right guards. Usefully, you can swap these functions with no limitations. I use left trigger for guard, black for khange style and right for special move. D-pad and button pushes kombined launch other attacks, and none of these moves require diagonal moves of the pad, which are often difficult to do in DOA. Movement of your kharakter is only by the D-pad. You can't use the left thumbstick instead, as you can on DOA, but the D-pad does work sufficiently.

Each kharakter has three fighting styles, one of them armed. You can do more damage armed but are also more vulnerable. The moves with the weapons are very nice.

Big disappointment in this game was the Konquest mode. You follow a little monk walking between shrines, and at each shrine you have to complete a mission. All of the missions so far have been having to komplete pre-set moves within a time limit. Some of the early ones can be useful introductions to the unique moves of each kharakter, but things tend to grind to a halt when you get to the kombinations.

Simple button kombos have to be entered very quickly. Add one move that requires D-pad input too and often you'll prove too slow. How are you supposed to execute multiple near-simultaneous strikes on a foe when the first one blasts him yards away from you? And if you do manage to perform these difficult moves, there are probably a kouple equally hard you must perform in the time limit, so you loose your progress.

Maybe this is easier with the kontrols on other platforms MK is used for, but it is pretty obvious that I will never komplete Konquest. For one karakter I can't even komplete the first mission.

Maybe if the time limit had not been included and there was a way to opt out or bypass missions?

I think the Kano kharakter is supposed to be a Brit, since the makers try to use English slang -but did they really mean to tell me to “bounce Sonja's bristols”?

All things considered, I think DOA3 is more playable. MK is definitely a try before you buy game”

Ah, will I ever forget my first hit? A silenced 9mm into the back of the Don's head. Then his guards rumble what is going on, I resort to the twin .45s and it all gets a bit “John Woo”. Still, ten Mafiosi dead for 32 rounds fired is pretty good going.

Just completed the first mission of this game, and it is certainly a hit (sorry!). Had a little bit of trouble getting started, but resorting to the internet gave me the hint to wait by the side door till a guard comes out to have a pee.

Contrary to what you might have read, controlling the character is pretty easy, although I've still not mastered sneak mode (you have to be very light on the left trigger). Latest triumph was I took out both of my targets with one shot. A very nice feature about this game is that there are multiple ways to complete missions. Only gripe so far is that like so many programmers the makers don't know that clips are not the same as magazines.

Hitman 2 is a third person game, but the controls are the same as for games like Halo and Turok -you just have a rear view of your character in the foreground. This is actually a lot more interesting than a first person game. You can admire some of 47's fighting moves, and keep a check of what disguise he's wearing. You can also play the game with a first person view, with all the controls the same. This is useful for certain sections, or just to add variety. Be nice to see this option offered on more games.

I've replayed it several times since then, and discovered a few new features. One is the weapon collector feature. If you finish a level with a new weapon you found, it gets added to the collection in your shed. What's more, you can now use these weapons when you replay earlier levels (so back to the Don's house with the M60....)

The other useful feature is “Silent Assassin” rating. The way to get this varies, but generally means maximum stealth, minimum alarms or expenditure of ammo and only killing the designated target. First SA wins you a pair of silenced .45s, second a sawn-off shotgun. For four or five SAs you are supposed to get the M4A1 Assault Rifle, but this has never happened for me. Maybe you are supposed to get the SAs consecutively, or in the same sitting or something? You can also get this gun as a battlefield pick-up on one level. It's actually a lot of fun to replay a level and try to kill less!

Minor gripe: 47 has some nice knife fighting moves, but these are not used with the Katana, which is a pity. You only get a rather mechanical slow downward chop. Be nice if there had been more use of f“found” weapons. 47 was in lots of environments where spanners, hammers, screwdrivers, bottles, frying pans etc would have been available.

Not even ordered this one yet, but plan to as soon as its available.

It was supposed to be out Spring 2003, but still no sign of the Big Guy.

If you go searching for Walkthroughs in this game, you'll find that many of the authors misspell the name “Aquilla”

Picked this up on the bargain rack at Blockbuster, so came with no manual, but simple enough to work out, and a good opening/training mission.

Aquila is a walking tank, but with four legs rather than the usual two, and also capable of limited flight. Action is first person, but each level begins with a little third person view as a scene setter.

This game could have been improved by the option to save your progress during missions, rather than having to repeat from the start everytime you die or fail. Some of the battles are big, and you'll often fail if your allies lose too many units, or your supply ship gets sunk or the enemy manages to field to many units.

Naval missions need some planning, since you only have limited flight time before you need to land and recharge, and despite being created on a waterworld, Aquila doesn't float!

Some of the battles have been tough, but a fun game, and the ability to either fly or act as a tank offers some interesting tactical options. Weapons in ground mode are more powerful, so you can land on large enemies and do more damage. "Weapons Augmented" isn't a jam or overheat as I first thought. It lets you fire a more powerful blast if you keep the trigger depressed. Micromissiles are self guiding against many targets if you don't aim them, and holding the trigger in for a moment fires more.

The level that really floored me was “Crushing Blow”. After at least a hundred attempts, I resorted to the “God” cheat. Nice thing about this cheat is you can turn it off and on at any time and you get unlimited flight time as a god.

Crushing blow appears to be a bit buggy. Often the game will declaire that you've lost too many forces after a couple of minutes of play, when you appear to be winning. Some of the missions are a little unrealistic. Like many games with allies you are expected to do all the work, such as defending the base ship and clearing another beach for a landing. Another level tells you not to bother saving the city if a third of the buildings have gone. On other levels the friendly forces do pull their weight, and choosing the correct wingman for a mission can make a lot of difference.

Finished this one and a lot of fun. This is a third person game with similar character controls to Hitman 2, Silent Assassin: i.e., a sort of first person shooter with the character in the foreground. Unlike Hitman 2, Silent Assassin, there is no option to play the game in first person mode.

Max Payne is a New York cop that goes to war against the mob. After playing Hitman it was odd to play a game with similar controls and not need to worry about stealth or hitting innocents. If it moves, blast it! The game is supposed to have a self regulating difficulty system: if you are doing too well, hoods start getting tougher. I think the game could do with more set levels of difficulty too. You find the shotgun pretty early in the game, and that is probably the most useful weapon I've encountered so far. Odd thing about the shotgun is that it usually only hits one target at once. That's pretty close to real-life performance for these ranges, but odd when you are used to shotguns being an area weapon in other games.

A big feature of this game is that you can switch to “Bullet time”: everything moves in slow motion apart from your targeting. Very cool.

Playing this after Hitman, I sort of miss the creeping up on people element, although there is a bit of this in Max Payne, notably the “Baseball Bat” chapter.

You can save whenever you want. Very useful before going into big battles or trying to work out where to go next.
Finisher Notes: Use the sniper rifle or automatic fire to cut two of the support cables. You need to stand near the corner of the roof to hit the second cable's anchor point. Once you cut both cables, turn towards the tower and rapid fire at it till the cutscene triggers

Got this the same day as Max Payne, so still early days. This is a third person game, but the view is usually from overhead, which took some getting used to. You can switch to a first person view, but your movement is limited: you can peek over things or around them. This makes the combat sections a little tough. There is a way to use your weapons when in third person mode, but I've not perfected it yet. Mission is mainly about stealth, but there are some combat sections you have to complete (i.e. “Boss fights”).

There are some nice ideas, such as using fire extinguishers or cigarette smoke to detect alarm beams, or hiding with a cardboard box over your head.

This game could really use a good training/tutorial level. There are some VR/Alternate missions, but these are under time limit, so not much chance to hone your skills.

This is a campaign game, and some of the cutscenes are quite long. Good feature is you can save where you want.

Special honorary mention for the makers of MGS2 for calling the magazines “magazines”.

Saw this available for £14.99. Missed this but got it as part of the “Classics” range for £19.99, Oddly, some places still have it at £39.99!

Reading reviews of this the term “button masher” was used, which made me fear that the combat system might be akin to Mortal Kombat. In fact it is nothing of the sort, and the fighting system is very easy to use and visually very satisfying. This is a beat-em up with a storyline, something MK and DOA3 could have done with. There is also an “Arena” mode, but I've not tried this yet. The story is based on an unfilmed script for Season 3 of the TV series, and the voices of all of the cast, except SMG, were used for the game. The voice for Buffy sounds a little more Californian than the original at first, though oddly the voice that sounded most wrong was Xander.

This is a third person game, which means you get to admire the rendering of the character. Buffy does actually “run like a girl”, and true to the early seasons, lots of very nice low cut outfits (Sorry, I'm a guy-thing). Left thumbstick controls the movement, right the camera angle, but unlike Hitman she doesn't automatically face the way the camera faces. This is similar to JSRF and actually works rather well for a fighting game. You can switch to first person to use the crossbow or look at things, but can't move.

A very nice feature is that if Buffy encounters a ledge she pulls herself up. If you miss-judge a jump she'll catch the edge then pull up. A nice touch, an added bit of realism and saves a lot of unnecessary restarts.

Still in the early stages of this game, so will add more as I progress. Main gripe at the moment is the usual -you can't save during a level, so must restart again if you die. The makers have at least considered this a little by making some of the “boss fights” separate levels.

Rayne is a dhampir, the child of a vampire and a mortal woman. She's beautiful, has a very sexy voice and is deadlier than a brick wall across a speedway. Rayne fights with deadly blades attached to her arms and feet, and her strength lets her handle an SMG or assault rifle like a pistol and a heavy machine gun like a rifle

What the manual calls “first person” is in fact Hitman/Max Pyne -style third person with the standard arrangement used in Halo/Turok etc. The “third person” control settings allow most of the movement to be made with one stick, but are a little odd. Left thumbstick controls most of the movement, while right looks up and down with the option of a movement that is supposed to be a sidestep but isn't. This system is neither the system used on Halo/Hitman, nor that used on JSRF/Buffy, yet sufficiently different but also similar enough to cause mishaps. Many times I've stepped off a narrow place when I intended to just look around. You can switch between these different modes at anytime, which is useful, and can switch cheats on and off at anytime too.

The combat sequences are spectacular. She slashes through her foes like a cartwheeling rotor, and because the blades are strapped to her forearms she can still shoot as well, often simultaneously targeting two different individuals. And all of these moves are controlled by just the two triggers. It would have been nice if there were a few more close combat moves, and those she had didn't seem to always occur in the same order. There is no need to look for health packs –Rayne simply bites her enemies. Aura vision is nice, since not only do you see your foes, but how much damage they've taken and where you are supposed to be going. There is also an equivalent to “Bullet-time”. This is a lot of fun, since there is no time limit so you can use it as much as you want. It also has a different feel to combat in normal time or “Rage” mode, which adds variety. In close combat in “dilated perception"” mode you have to pay more attention to your range and position wrt the target.

How high and how far Rayne can jump can catch you out. You can run around looking for stairs then discover that you can jump onto the roof or gantry!

There is a wide variety of weapons available, but for many of them you don't really get to appreciate the different characteristics of –Rayne tends to blaze away and then just grab another should she run empty or run over something better. Targeting is mainly the computer's selection, but you can fire short bursts or double taps if you try.

First level of the game is lots of jumping to avoid going in the water. That's a little unfair since it will take time to learn Rayne's jumping characteristics. I'd had a long day so invoked “God mode”. Because of this it is a little hard for me to judge just how hard some of the fights may be. Some of the bosses so far seem tough, and often you seem to be outnumbered. Certain levels may involve far more stealth than I've been playing (the manual often mentions sneaking up and biting people).

All the combat and mayhem was great fun until I reached a prolonged jumping level. Not impossible, but these just seem rather tedious to me. The hint that you can jump up on top of the “lamps” to get more height proved to be useful.

I got stuck trying to exit the next level for a long time. Trick is to jump towards the hole in the wall, then hit jump again as you fall past, so the move turns into a flying kick that you can steer with the thumbstick. Use dilated perception to do this if you need to.

My only real gripe is that you get the impression that you can save anywhere, but each time I've tried I've been told the save will be at the start of the level.

Didn't play this for a while, Rayne and Buffy having diverted me (I wish!)

Like Max Payne, this is a third person shooter about a cop over the edge and includes a bullet time feature. The game has enough features of its own to stand apart, however. There is a nice “hide around the corner” and shoot mode, and you can also grab foes as a human shield. As well as various weapons you can fight with kicks, punches and throws, and you also have an attack dog who will helpfully attack bad guys and fetch their guns.

So far, so good, and the game started off well, but the makers have also included the not so welcome feature of “mini-games”.

The first was not bad -"“helping the stripper dance"” -but kind of pointless- would have rather just have sat back and enjoyed the cutscene. It is in the next chapter that the game ground to a halt on the first day, which is never a good thing. The idea is that you are in prison and collected cigarette packs by fighting inmates or winning challenges. What is annoying is that the game is fixed. Regardless of whether you play the two mini-games in the gym, you always end up meeting the arm-wrestler exactly one pack short of the total. And the arm-wrestling game is poxy! If I had nothing better to do that sit there for an hour or two doing nothing else, I might manage it, but I have got better things to do and this is not what you buy an action game for.

I've contacted EA games, and been told there is no way to bypass the mini-games, so here is the cheat code to unlock the other levels:

The sad part is that the actual action sections work quite well. Unlike Hitman and Max Payne you target by working the right trigger to move the cursor between possible targets. Colour of the cursor indicates if the target is in range or has been killed. This is a nice system, and the way the camera works means you can see your character emptying his AKM or twin Ingrams into a nearby foe.

A nice system ruined by some dumb features.